MACBOOK PRO I7 LATENCY ABSURD PROBLEM

[jca78]

this is a simple direct monitoring issue.


the problem is most likely guitar rig, they should have a tone direct monitor feed to headphone/output of your choice. i use mbp and have had the 8pre (using m-audio2626 now for unrelated reason) both are great units. this is a very common problem and why a lot of guitarist still rely on hardware vs soft. instead of trying to monitor your tone thru the daw, go around it.

[Palmer Eldritch]

- I have problem with latency (I need the lowest latency possible)
- with a saffire pro40 I go at 128 samples about 10ms in+out, with a motu ultralite mk3 about 7m in+out (128 samples)

Why do you not use a buffer size of 64 or 32 samples if the in/out latency is that important for you ?

If external plug-ins are involved (like guitar rig) also try a smaller buffer for VST/AU effects: (Live) preferences > CPU > Plug-In Buffer Size > -value-

!!! And avoid long plug-in chains in the record path !!!

regards, palmer

[Dragonbreath]

you could also go up to 96khz....

I get 10.3ms at 44.1 but only 4.75 at 96 with same buffer (128)

[trevox]

you have some ubber laptop and good external interface.

You have to take time to set everything right, that's it.

I would be lucky to have a macbook pro i7 and the saffire40, I would surely not pass my time on the forum finding a soluce but well take the time to truly set my system for my production sets.

It's always rewarding

why buy an interface maybe slower than mac internal card?

completely wrong here man, why would we spend such amount of money for sucking latency whores soundcards.

Come on wake up!

maybe, but but I'm not wasting time in useless and unkind accusations without trying to understand the quesiton, so please, consider:
- macbooks have not to much to set up
- I need an audio input only to play minimal guitar parts in complex textures which requires a lot of hardware resources, so I need the lowest possuble latency
- if i put my guitar direct into my macbook I have, as I wrote, I've got 7.46ms of total latency (44.1, 128 samples)
- a lot of interfaces are slower than internal macbook soundcard

so, if you need only an audio input the question "why use an external interface if macbook internal soundcard goes faster" is a right question.

another question could be: what audio interfaces are fasters than internal macbook soundcard?

if could be good to have not unuseful and unkind reproaches, but reports of concrete personal experiences
i.e.
- a guy told me he has an audiofire 2 and in his experience this interface is a little bit slower than the internal mac hardware, so, if you have to use only an input you waste money (and latency) if you interface your guitar with an audiofire

similary
maybe apogee duet can run faster than macbook internal soundcard? how fast in your experience?
rme babyface can do the job?
If I could reach about 4ms of total latency instead of my 7.46 of internal mac soundcard i could consider to invest 500 euros.

maybe the only choice is rme firefaces?

please it could be useful to post experiences, reproaches are less useful

One reason for not using the internal sound card would be that the A/D converters are nowhere near as good as on a decent external sound card. Also, there are only 2 inputs internally - most people would want more.

Seriously though, as others have said, your latency is just about as low as you are going to get it and no sound card is going to get it down anywhere near zero on your machine. A more powerful machine will help as it is your machine that needs to process audio when you start effecting it with VST or other plugins. If you want to record at 96kHz as someone suggested to lower your latency further, your machine will also need to cope with that, but that would be worth trying.

I have a 2.2 GHz quad core early 2011 MBP and I can get my latency down to 76 samples on a track that has 6 CPU hungry VST instruments (all Arturia) and VST EQ's, compressors etc etc on all channels. I would say somewhere between 20/25 plugins in total. I reckon I could get that considerably lower if I wasn't using as much external plugins/instruments. So my slightly more powerful machine can probably achieve somewhere near what you want with the internal sound card. It also plays fine on my MOTU - I can't get the latency down much further, but it's pretty much the same.

If you are really dead set on getting your latency lower, buy a quad core MBP - it will help more than spending a load of money on a different sound card.

EDIT: BTW, the round trip for 76 samples at 44.1 KHz is 5.3ms. I also tried changing to 96kHz, but with the amount of plugins I am using, I would need to increase the latency a LOT to get it working. I do record at 96kHz a lot with pretty low latency, but I would not have a ton of plugins if any running at the same time.

[anto]

you could also go up to 96khz....

I get 10.3ms at 44.1 but only 4.75 at 96 with same buffer (128)

I can't because I'd needs more cpu resources
i.e. if i use guyitar rig standalone i can get an overall latency of 1.4ms with internal macbook pro soundcard (96khz, 32 samples), but i cannot do the same settings in ableton live, obiouvsly. put 96khz needs too much cpu power to feed my plugins

[anto]

probably I have other money to spend to have a (real) low latency set up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWS8zXKk ... e=youtu.be

[Hermanus]

At about 4.15 He talks about input 3 and 4 with direct monitor [as he says, perfect for guitar]
It only confirms what has been said here.

RME is good but are you getting to purchase bundle of expensive soundcards and run into the same problem for each?
You already have a low latency setup man, just take the time to set it up right.